Bedtime Chaos

Lately bedtime at our house has been horrible! We decided about 2 weeks ago to finally stack the boys bunk beds. Their room is kind of small anyway and they keep accumulating more and more stuff, so we needed the room. We thought they would be excited about sleeping on the top bunk and we worried that we would have a constant fight about who was going to sleep on the top. The exact opposite happened. No one ever slept on the top bunk! Bryce at one point told me he wasn't afraid of the monsters in the haunted house at the pumpkin patch just sleeping on the top bed. So needless to say the boys haven't been sleeping well because they have been sharing the full size bed on the bottom. Although they would occasionally sleep together before, they sleep much better in separate beds. We are somewhat transitioning away from taking an afternoon nap about half the time. With the boys sleeping in the same beds naps had become non existent.
So this weekend we took the beds down. It was kind of a sad day. It was so nice to have that extra floor space in their room but I'm not willing to sacrifice sleep for walking room in their bedroom. So hopefully we have cured the boys sleeping problems.
Abby has been a sleeping disaster from the start. I don't know if its the fact that she is a singleton, a girl or probably our last baby, but we haven't ever put our foot down when it came to her bedtime. She is now 20 months old and as embarrassing as this is to admit we have been holding her until she goes to sleep and then putting her in her bed. I know this is against anything any child raising book says. We have just got into a rut and now we feel bad changing everything on her. We have also now reached the point where she is done with her crib so there is no way to contain her now while we attempt to change her sleeping habits. So not only do we hold her until she is asleep, we go in and sleep in her full size bed with her when she wakes up during the night and to top it off we still give her a cup of milk in the middle of the night. I know what you are probably thinking by now, you are probably laughing your head off thinking we are the biggest suckers ever. We really did much better with the boys! By the time they were 12 months they would put themselves to sleep in their cribs and sleep through the night without a milk cup. Like I said many wrong turns and sleep deprived decisions have gotten us to the point where we are. So Saturday night was my breaking point. I was attempting to put Abby to sleep but I was really just wanting to spend my Saturday evening with my hubby instead of going to bed at 9:00. Abby was crawling all over me saying No No Nigh Night. She had head butted my twice and was sticking her fingers in my mouth, eyes and ears. It was very apparent that this was not going to be a quick bedtime. I laid there with her dinking around for about 40 min and I was done! Robb tried putting her to bed for another 20 min and the decision was made. She was going to go to sleep in her own bed if we had to say up all night for that to happen. We put her in her bed with her blankie and doll and told her goodnight. After we left she screamed her head off, kicked the door and babbled angrily which sounded a lot like she was cussing us out. We let that go on for 10 min and went in to comfort her and then the same thing happened another 4 times before she finally gave up and went to sleep. It was horrible! We felt like such crummy parents putting her through this at such an old age. I hope to God she doesn't remember!
I am happy to report last night was not nearly as painful of a process. We put her to bed in her own room by herself and she fell asleep in about 10 min. Although at midnight she was crying and I did end up sleeping in her room the rest of the night. I guess we just need to undo this mess we have created one thing at a time. Wish us luck and patience!